Does triggering certain emotions increase willingness to pay for sustainably produced food? In social media, emotional messages are often used to influence users' consumer behaviour. An international research team including the University of Göttingen investigated the short- and medium-term effects of such content on consumers' willingness to pay for bars of chocolate. They found that in the short term, provoking certain emotions increases willingness to pay, but the effect weakens after a very short time. The results were published in the journal Q Open.

In a new study, researchers explored how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance performance and trust in knowledge work environments. They found that when AI systems provided feedback in real-time, performance and trust increased.

Fesearch has shown that adults instinctively think of men when asked to think of a person—they describe the most “typical” person they can imagine as male and assume storybook characters without a specified gender are men. A new study by psychology researchers shows that the way parents talk to their children may contribute to these perceptions. Their findings show that parents across the US are more likely to use gender-neutral labels—for instance, “kid”—more often for boys than for girls and to use gender-specific labels, such as “girl,” more often for girls than for boys. 

Perinatal interventions guided by reproductive justice principles can have positive effects on the perinatal mental health of Black birthing patients and, perhaps, the mental health development of their infants, states a systematic review published in a special issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry, part of the Lippincott portfolio from Wolters Kluwer.

A $100 million philanthropic commitment, the largest in Cornell Engineering’s history, from David A. Duffield ’62, MBA ’64, will significantly expand the college’s existing Duffield Hall, creating a new state-of-the-art home for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and critical new lab space for strategic research priorities.